Thursday, May 1, 2014

Lots of news today

Since my bronchoscopy Monday, my breathing has stayed the
same, labored with exertion. Did more than I expected at rehab Wednesday, 8
minutes on the treadmill and five sets of four exercises, Leg Press, Chest
Press, Stretch Band and squatting while on a foam block, with 3 LPM of O2
running, and stayed at 90% saturation or above. The bad news is that my FEV1
(Forced expiratory volume in 1 second) the amount of air I can blow out in one
second numbers have dropped from 1.6 liters average to 1.3 liters, but back up
this morning to 1.5 liters. I fear I'm getting the dynamic collapse since he
took the stent out. I talked to the NP, and she will ask the surgeon if he
wants to do another bronch next week instead of in two weeks. And the fight
goes on. ~Bob

Excerpt: And yet today Senate Democrats came exactly six
votes shy of moving forward with a bill that would
raise the hourly federal minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 over a 30 month period.
The official tally was 54-42 (they needed 60 votes to get past cloture) and as
expected, most lawmakers voted the party line; only Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.)
joined Democrats to advance the measure:

Excerpt: A federal judge Tuesday struck down Wisconsin's requirement
that voters show a state-issued photo ID to vote, saying it unfairly burdens
poor and minority voters. U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman's decision
invalidates Wisconsin voter ID law. Gov. Scott
Walker and Republicans who run the state Legislature had vowed to call
lawmakers back to the Capitol to pass a new version of the law if it were
struck down. (Then ALL ID requirements for booze, airplanes, cashing checks,
getting into NAACP anti-ID rallies, unfairly burden the poor and minorities who
are, in the judge's view, too lazy, stupid or incompetent to get IDs. ~Bob)

Clippers owner Donald
Sterling banned for life from NBA, fined $2.5 million by NBA

Excerpt: The NBA threw the book at LA Clippers owner Donald
Sterling, banning him for life, fining him $2.5 million and raising the
possibility of a forced sale of the team over racist remarks he made to an
ex-girlfriend that surfaced on a tape recording. (Okay with me. I just wish
they were as tough on professional athletes who engage in violent or criminal
behavior. No more repugnant to me that Michael Vick, now making millions with
the Eagles, killing dogs. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Even Gov. Jerry Brown is doing something, anything,
to solve the problem. On Friday, he told restaurants they should serve
water only to the patrons who request it and asked Californians to let their
cars go dirty since washing them uses too much water. One wonders if
restrictions on showers will come next. The solution to the drought need not be
so complex. By simply letting water cost what it actually costs, Californians
would conserve on their own without the heavy hand of government hovering over
their heads. Simply put, government does not have to police water use when the
market does. (An interesting point of view. Not that there's any chance of it
being implemented. I wonder how dry it will get in CA, and what people will do
if it really gets into crisis proportions. --Del. Basic economics. the cheaper
a good is, the more of it people use. ~Bob)

Excerpt: The video below was put together by the Immigrant Archive Project.
It features 15 randomly selected individuals attempting to answer some of the
easiest questions from the citizenship test. A passing grade is actually a near
failing grade in the real world. Out of ten questions, a person trying to
acquire citizenship must get only six questions correct. That’s a D- average.

Excerpt: The wild horses of the American West may be no less
invasive than the Asian carp advancing on the Great Lakes.
Most species of the tumbleweed, icon of the Old West, are actually from Russia or Asia.
The notion that America
was “wild” when Europeans found it is more than a little racist. It assumes
Indians didn’t act like humans everywhere else by changing their environment.
Native Americans cultivated plants, cleared forests with extensive burning to
boost the population of desired animals, and otherwise altered the landscape in
ways that may have seemed natural to newcomers but were nonetheless profound.

Excerpt: The vast majority of economists surveyed this month
by The Associated Press say lifting restrictions on exports of oil and natural
gas would help the economy even if it meant higher fuel prices for consumers. More
exports would encourage investment in oil and gas production and transport,
create jobs, make oil and gas supplies more stable and reduce the U.S. trade
deficit, they say. (Unfortunately, Obama listens to the self-anointed
"green experts" in his base, and to hell wit jobs for the average
guy. He would no more care what economists thught than Hoover did, when, against the advice of a
thousand economists, he signed the Smoot-Hawley Bill, collapsing international
trade and turning a recession into the great depresion. ~Bob)

Krauthammer: ‘Mainstream
Media’ Won’t Be Interested in Benghazi
‘Cover-up of a Cover-up’

Excerpt: Commentator Charles Krauthammer challenged the
mainstream media to report on documents released this week directly tying
then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s Benghazi
talking points to instructions in an email from a White House official. “The
mainstream media are going to say, ‘Oh, it’s so complicated,’ and they’re not
going to look into this and without it it’s going to be quite a struggle,”
Krauthammer said last
night on Fox’s “Special Report.”

Excerpt: Finally, Democrats and liberals can no longer
pretend that the Obama administration did no wrong on the Benghazi scandal. New emails uncovered through a request by Judicial Watch using
the Freedom of Information Act prove that the White House completely
manufactured the “video protest” angle and that they did it to protect
themselves from political damage. One of the Obama administration’s main
goals - "To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet
video, and not a broader failure of policy." In essence… let’s lie to America
because we don’t want to look bad. Here’s Rep Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) talking
about the revelations with Gretchen Carlson.

9 Racist Things that
Big Democrats Have Said and the Media Has Forgotten

Excerpt: With all this racism talk going around… I think
it’s important that we reflect on some of the most horribly racist quotes that
Democrats have dropped… and that the media has forgotten about… in the past
couple of years. In a time when we still hear about Dan Quayle misspelling the
word potato, you would think that these quotes would’ve been even
more memorable… From Hillary to Joe to Bill and Barack… they’ve all had
fantastically horrible things to say about other races… but the media
conveniently forgets about these quips…Let’s take a walk down the ignorant
left’s racism lane shall we?

Excerpt: An Obama critic these
days is anyone who’s been mugged by reality in the last five years. From the
left you have Maureen Dowd,
who sounds more like Charles Krauthammer: (Dowd's a racist--only criticizes
his policies because he's black. "Whiling" is a racial code
word. Think the media should attack her as they do conservatives who dare to
disagree. ~Bob)

Excerpt: “Upon further review, the ruling on the field
(court)…” These are the words stated by referees after they’ve gone to the
reply booth (monitor) in order to clarify a controversial call. Often, the
reason for the review is because of a coach’s challenge. Therefore, in the same
light, let us review the case of LA Clippers owner, Donald Sterling. There can
be no debate that the words of Mr. Sterling were reprehensible and disgusting.
But how and why did these words come to light now, when his points of view were
apparently well-known for many years?

Two Suspects Who Dragged Mom Across a Parking Lot Get a
Swift Lesson in Texas’
Concealed Carry Law. By Liz Klimas

Excerpt: 3. Being a publicly vicious racist while
black. Spike
Lee has stated that white gentrification of Harlem has been horrible,
has posted the address of George Zimmerman’s parents online to spur violence,
has explained after visiting South Africa in the early 1990s, “I seriously
wanted to pick up a gun and shoot whites. The only way to resolve matters is by
bloodshed.” He, like Donald Sterling, is no fan of interracial dating: “I give
interracial couples a look. Daggers. They get uncomfortable when they see me on
the street.”

Excerpt: The Obama administration is considering a reduction
in the number of illegal immigrants it deports, pending passage of an
immigration reform plan now stalled in Congress. But most voters still believe
the federal government is not aggressive enough in this area already and should
not halt deportations while it waits on Congress to act.

Excerpt: riminal grand jury has launched a probe into Gov.
Pat Quinn’s troubled anti-violence program — once likened to “a political slush
fund” — delivering a major blow to the Democrat as he seeks re-election this
fall. On Tuesday, the Quinn administration turned over 1,000 documents
pertaining to the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative to the CookCountyState’s Attorney Anita
Alvarez following a subpoena from her office.

Excerpt: Police and security forces are "helpless"
to quell unrest in two eastern regions bordering Russia, and in some cases are
cooperating with pro-Russian gunmen who have seized scores of government
buildings and taken people hostage, the country's acting president said Wednesday.

Excerpt: Some of the biggest hypocrites the world has ever
known are those who spend their days promoting liberal/lefty agendas while
devoting their nights to sheltering themselves from the effects their own
ideologies (::cough::George
Soros ::cough::).

Excerpt: Teenagers with involved fathers are significantly
more likely to graduate from college, says Bradford Wilcox, associate professor
in the department of sociology at the University of Virginia
and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. ... Teenagers with
involved fathers were 98 percent more likely to graduate from college than
teens who reported that their fathers were not involved. Those with very
involved fathers were 105 percent more likely to graduate from college.

Excerpt: One person not morally preening or saying anything
at all on the matter of Clayton Lockett’s execution is Stephanie Neiman. In all
the discussion over how Clayton Lockett was executed, few have paid attention
to Miss. Neiman. Clayton Lockett beat her, bound her with duct tape, covered
her mouth, shot her, then buried her alive.

Excerpt: Yesterday we reported on the revelation that the
White House made a conscious decision
to blame the sacking of our Benghazi consulate on a silly and sparsely
distributed internet video called Innocence of
Muslims. In an email distributed by Ben Rhodes, senior policy makers,
among them Susan Rice, are told to 1) blame the internet video for the
violence, 2) deflect attention from greater policy failures (one presumes he’s
talking about everything the Obama regime had touched), and 3) emphasize
Obama’s cool and collected leadership.

[It was noted in the post yesterday that Ben Rhodes is the
brother of CBS News David Rhodes and this might explain some of the difficulty
former CBS reporter Sharly Atkisson had in getting Benghazi stories aired on CBS.]

Excerpt: Under investigation from the FBI; off the campaign
trail for neck surgery; losing women to the white, male Republican; and not
getting enough support from south state Hispanic voters, poor old Wendy Davis
is collapsing. The Democratic Governors Association chair says winning Texas is not a priority.
The money isn’t going to be flowing to Wendy like she thought.

Excerpt: The White House Correspondents’ Association began as a response to Woodrow
Wilson’s threat to end presidential press conferences. A century later, White
House reporters no longer have to line up outside the fence each morning to
shout their questions, but they’re still fighting for access: Photographers
rarely get candid shots of President Obama, while reporters vie for coveted
interviews with him or simply for on-the-record quotes from administration
officials addicted to anonymity.

Excerpt: What is different about the history of Dunbar is that, from its founding in 1870 as the first
public high school in the country for black students, until the mid 1950s, it
was an outstanding academic success. As far back as 1899, when tests were given
in Washington's
four academic high schools at that time, the black high school scored higher
than two of the three white high schools. That was the M Street School that was
renamed DunbarHigh School in 1916.

Excerpt: Sometimes doctrines just vanish, once they
appear as naked as the proverbial emperor in his new clothes. Something like
that seems now to be happening with affirmative action. Despite all the
justifications for its continuance, polling shows the public still strongly
disagrees with the idea of using racial criteria for admissions and hiring.

Hillary Clinton's Problem Isn't Age--It's Experience. By
Daniel Greenfieldhttp://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/dgreenfield/hillary-clintons-problem-isnt-age-its-experience/Excerpt: Hillary Clinton only won one political
office and she did so in her fifties. Despite winning two elections, her Senate
career only covered the period from January 2001 to January 2009.It’s more time than Obama spent in the Senate, but
that’s not saying much. JFK was considered young and inexperienced after
spending 14 years in Congress. Hillary Clinton isn’t young, but her experience
in elected office at the age of 69 will be less than his was at the age of 44.

Excerpt: A pattern of duplicate registrations found
nationwide shows voter fraud is both massive and systemic. Yet, the Obama
administration claims there is no problem and that demands for voter ID cards
are racist. Last month the Rev. Al Sharpton was the keynote speaker at a rally
to kick off the campaign for an Ohio Voters' Bill of Rights state
constitutional amendment opposing the use of voter ID. During the rally, he hugged one Melowese Richardson, the HamiltonCounty,
Ohio, poll
worker who was convicted of casting five votes for President Obama, as the
audience cheered. (You can't pick up some prescriptions, register at a
hotel, get on a plane, see your doctor, or do tons of other common things without
a picture ID. Most states, certainly NC, have made it very easy for anyone to
get help in getting a free official photo ID. Yet we still see dogged, devoted
resistance to voter ID all over the place. People claim it's a medicine for
which there is no disease, ignoring the number of former ACORN people in jail
for voter fraud. In the very worst case, if it's minor, it's still a bad thing,
and there is no harm in requiring ID. If you can't get your butt off the couch
to make the call to get free ID, then how can you find the energy to get your
butt to the polling place? This has gotten to be ridiculous. --Del. I bet if you walked
through any minority neighborhood and offered ten dollars to anyone who could
show you a photo ID, you'd pay 95% of the folks. ~Bob)

A Tale of One and ManyCities:
The teachers’ union in Philadelphia
takes on the superintendent of schools — and their students. By Tom Rogan

Excerpt: Unfortunately, this is how Democratic-party
politics often work. The result is that Philadelphia
students are being abandoned at the intersection of greed and power.

This is the sad tale that liberals can never talk about: the
preference of political patronage over quality education.

John Kerry's Jewish
Best Friends. By Caroline Glickhttp://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/caroline-glick/john-kerrys-jewish-best-friends/
Excerpt: Anti-Semitism is not a simple bigotry. It is a complex neurosis. It
involves assigning malign intent to Jews where none exists on the one hand, and
rejecting reason as a basis for understanding the world and operating within it
on the other hand. John Kerry’s recent use of the term “Apartheid” in reference
to Israel’s
future was an anti-Semitic act.

Excerpt: “As reported at the time,
the 14-year-old girl and her 17-year-old sister went to Yarrow’s hotel room
seeking an autograph. “Yarrow answered the door naked and made sexual advances
that stopped short of intercourse”. [COMMENT from Kate: I hadn't heard that
he'd raped a 14 old-girl, but when I lived in New York (1970-1975) I had a friend who said
he tried to attack her. She was a young student at BrooklynCollege
when this happened. It must have been the late sixties. She said that Peter
Yarrow was in hospital and she went to get an interview with him for the school
newspaper & that he got her into a corner, but that she had got him off. I
always felt that she'd been telling the truth, but this sort of confirms that
she was. I wrote this to Daniel Greenfield and he said I'm not the first person
to write to him to say this sort of thing.]

Two Brothers at Center
of Benghazi Controversy:
One Runs CBS News, the Other Is Obama’s Adviser. By Rob Bluey

Excerpt: CBS News President David Rhodes is the brother of
Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser who drafted
the newly
released document about Benghazi
just days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed four Americans. Ben
Rhodes’s involvement was first revealed Tuesday when Judicial Watch obtained
the document as part of a court case.

The Peace Process is the
Process of Blaming Israel.
By Daniel Greenfield

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-peace-process-is-process-of-blaming.html
Excerpt: But contrary to the Peace Lobby sloganeering, Israel isn't
morally bankrupt, the intellectual premises of Zionism aren't shattered and
it's not a failed state on the verge of destruction. It's the Peace Lobby that
is frantically struggling to keep its big lie together. Its attacks on Israel are not
a show of strength, but a desperate cover-up. From the high chambers where John
Kerry suggests Israel is
going to be an ApartheidState to the low chambers
of failed boycotts against academics and soda companies, the purveyors of the
big lie are coming apart at the seams.

Excerpt: Commenting on Conrad
Black'smuch-read analysisof the upcoming Mann vs Steyn trial of
the century, Kathy Shaidleobserves:It is in fact very easy to imagine
Mann winning.The Supreme Court
of today is not the same Supreme Court that ruled on Hustler, for one thing;
for another, the West is more comfortable with censorship and less familiar
with basic principles of free speech.I
touched on the latter en passant in ourSundayMailbox:In
Australia and in Britain and even in America, free peoples are losing
the habit of free speech. And, when you lose the habit of free speech, you lose
the habit of freedom.[Before
I went to live in Britain in
1975, I'd spent the first 29 years of my life in New
Jersey and New York.
There were two things people used to say all the time back then. One of them
was, "Get real." The other was, "It's a free country; you can
say what you like." Since I got back to the "USA" in
January 2006, I have not heard one person say either of those things. Kate]

Excerpt: On the day that US
economic growth was reported to have slowed to "a barely discernible 0.1 per cent",
here are three signs that the nation's problems are more severe than (in the
feeble excuse offered by the court eunuchs of the Obama media) just a bit of inclement
weather: 1) AMERICAN DYNAMISM IS A MUSEUM ITEM The factory where the
inspiration for Rosie the Riveter once worked is about to betorn down:

Excerpt: Carney’s explanation has generated eye-rolling from
the media, in part because, as Ed Henry pointed out in the briefing room today,
the document was turned over as a result of a lawsuit seeking Benghazi documents.
Moreover, it seems inconceivable that Rhodes
was briefing Rice on everything but the most important issue of the
moment, the deaths of four Americans, and ensuing inquires in the middle
of a campaign. How was Rice supposed to know the memo was about everything but
what she was going to be grilled about on the Sunday shows?

Excerpt: In case you thought President Obama’s foreign
policy had hit rock bottom, there are signs things are getting worse. Still. The
administration admits Syria
isn’t living up to its promises to divest itself of weapons of mass
destruction. The
Post reports: “The months-long effort to dismantle Syria’s chemical weapons
program has ground to a halt because Syria is holding on to 27 tons of sarin
precursor chemicals as leverage in a dispute with the international community
over the future of facilities used to store the deadly agents, according to
U.S. officials.”

Meet The Poster Child
For ‘White Privilege’ – Then Have Your Mind Blown. By Jennifer Kabbany

Excerpt: His name is Tal Fortgang, and just eight months
into his Ivy League experience, he’s been told on numerous occasions to “check
his privilege” – a phrase that has taken social media social
justice campaigning by storm. It is meant to remind white, heterosexual
males that they have it so good because they’re white, heterosexual males. They
haven’t faced tough times, they don’t know what it’s like to be judged by the
color of their skin. Oh, but they do. Those sick of being labeled are the very same
ones doing it to others, and Tal Fortgang has a powerful message for them:

Excerpt: When the Ukrainian president was replaced by a
US-selected administration, in an entirely unconstitutional takeover, politicians such as
William Hague brazenly misled parliament about the legality of what
had taken place: the imposition of a pro-western government on Russia's most
neuralgic and politically divided neighbour.

Excerpt: n civilian life, when a contract is entered into by
two parties and it is subsequently discovered that one side knowingly presented
false promises in order to consummate the deal, a legitimate lawsuit can be
initiated on the basis of fraud. The Affordable Care Act is a prime
example of such a contract in the form of a bill, which would never
have been passed if it had been revealed that millions of people would lose
their health insurance with which they were satisfied and that they
would not be able to keep their doctor if they like their doctor, among other
promises. Nevertheless, this massive case of fraud is not been legally
challenged by the legislative branch, leaving one to wonder why.

The Department of Health and Human Services has already
doled out roughly $677 million on Healthcare.gov, and they're ready to spend
another $121 million between now and January 2015 to fix remaining issues.
Contractor Accenture Federal Services, which took over CGI Federal's massive
failure on building the website, now says the price tag will be $30 million
higher than the original $90 million estimate. Meanwhile, HHS is soliciting
applicants for next year's contractor services. By the time 2015 rolls around,
at least $800 million (by this administration's count) will have been spent on
the federal exchange. Brought to you by the "Affordable" Care Act.

Committee Learns
Who’s Paid for Obamacare: As of April 15, Only 67 Percent of Enrollees in
Federal Marketplace Had Paid First Month’s Premium

Excerpt: Data provided to the committee by every insurance
provider in the health care law’s Federally Facilitated Marketplace (FFM) shows
that, as of April 15, 2014, only 67 percent of individuals and families that
had selected a health plan in the federally facilitated marketplace had paid
their first month’s premium and therefore completed the enrollment process. Nationwide, only 25 percent of paid enrollees
are ages 18 to 34. ... On April 17, 2014,
President Obama declared the success of his law, claiming that 8 million
Americans had signed up for health insurance, but data from the insurance
providers reveals that the president’s figure is largely misleading. As
of April 15, 2014, insurers informed the committee that only 2.45 million had
paid their first month’s premium for coverage obtained through the federally facilitated
marketplace. (2.45 million isn't 67% of 8 million. I think this is because a
large part of the 8 million signed up for Medicaid, no premiums to them, and
it's 67% of those who were supposed to pay. ~Bob)

The Arkansas Obamacare bailout: A failed
Medicaid experiment is becoming a national nightmare

Excerpt: It’s window dressing on an Obamacare Medicaid
expansion to flamboozle Republicans into thinking it’s a free-market deal with
enhanced flexibility.
It’s definitely not. The Arkansas
version of Obamacare expansion comes with the same federal strings attached,
dictating who must be covered, what must be covered, how much can be charged, and
so on. The Arkansas Medicaid private option is already over budget by nearly 15
percent. Costs exceed federal caps and, absent a reversal, Arkansas taxpayers will be charged tens of
millions more dollars in cost overruns.

Excerpt: President Obama and Secretary of State John F.
Kerry never tire of telling Israel
all the ills that will befall it if it doesn’t make peace with the
Palestinians. However, they studiously ignore the Palestinians’ refusal to
embrace a two-state solution. We’re not talking about Hamas; the Palestinian Authority refuses to
relinquish the one-state solution. Moreover, Palestinian
Authority officials’ repeated comments amount to calls for genocide.

Syrian rebels
crucified: Islamic extremists execute two men in the most public way for
'fighting against Muslims'

Excerpt: The alleged ringleader of the Trojan Horse plot
wrote a detailed blueprint for the radical “Islamisation” of secular state
schools which closely resembles what appears to be happening in Birmingham.

Excerpt: It's an appropriate topic for a CAIR event:
the Hamas-linked organization is a champion at getting
what it wants," and ironically, given the nature of this event and its
venue, its officials have become particularly adept of late at "getting
what they want" at schools and universities. Academia, you might even say,
has become CAIR's latest target, and its newest tool – not only in its campaign
to silence critics of Islam – but too, to promote and spread messages of
pro-Muslim hate groups among American Muslim youth.

Excerpt: As if our public schools don’t have enough on their
plate, now Principal Tom Lopez at RockyMountainHigh
School in Fort
Collins, Colorado,
has decided that they need to force our students to pledge in Arabic. Why?
WHO KNOWS. Some weird attempt at empathizing or sympathizing with the Islamic
world?

Hundreds of kidnapped
Nigerian school girls reportedly sold as brides to militants for $12, relatives
say

Excerpt: “We have heard from
members of the forest community where they took the girls,” he told them. ”They
said there had been mass marriages and the girls are being shared out as wives
among the Boko Haram militants.” The girl’s father fainted, the Guardian
reported, and has since been hospitalized. But the news got
worse. Village elder Pogo Bitrus told Agence France
Presse locals had consulted with “various sources” in the
nation’s forested northeast. “From the information we received yesterday from
Cameroonian border towns our abducted girls were taken… into Chad and Cameroon,” he said, adding that
each girl was sold as a bride to Islamist militants for 2,000 naira — $12.
(Inflation. Used to be able to buy a sex slave from Muslims for a goat or two.
And the Holy Qur'an, which is the unchanging word of Allah as revealed by
Mohammad [PBUH], permits sex with slave girls. Mohammad kept slaves and is considered
the perfect example of conduct for Muslims, which is why, following his
example, many Muslim countries permit marriage to child brides. ~Bob)

Excerpt: Police say a valley man threatened to kill his
wife, telling his victim “Islamic Law” gave him the right to kill her. Ansar
Muhammad, 43, is facing several charges, including assault and imprisonment. According
to the police report, on April 26, Muhammad sexually assaulted the victim, held
her against her will while threatening to kill her, punched and strangulated
her, causing physical injuries at their home near 112th Avenue and Encanto Boulevard.

Excerpt; Sandwich chain
Subway has removed ham and bacon from its menus in nearly 200 stores, instead
serving halal meat, following calls from their Muslim customers. Participating
stores are serving turkey ham and rashers in place of the non-halal products. (Maybe
Americans should boycott Subway here in protest. Will we be next? ~JB. If
Christians were offended by stores selling Halal meat and protested, would they
stop selling it, or would they scream Islamophobia? ~Bob)

Excerpt: A bomb and knife attack at a railway station in China's western
Xinjiang region has killed three and injured 79 others, officials and state
media say. The attackers used explosives and knives at Urumqi's south railway station on Wednesday,
officials said. ... Xinjiang has seen a series of violent attacks in the past
year. Beijing
blames the violence on separatists from the mainly Muslim Uighur minority.

Excerpt: Few things are more abundantly attested in Islamic
law than the permissibility of child marriage. Islamic tradition records that
Muhammad’s favorite wife, Aisha, was six when Muhammad wedded her and nine when
he consummated the marriage: ... Muhammad was at this time fifty-four years
old. Marrying young girls was not all that unusual for its time, but because in
Islam Muhammad is the supreme example of conduct (cf. Qur’an 33:21), he is
considered exemplary in this unto today.

Excerpt: ~Effective today, the
Sultan of Brunei has made his lucky people the first in eastern Asia to liveunder a national Sharia law:"With
faith and gratitude to Allah the almighty, I declare thattomorrow,Thursday 1 May 2014,
will see the enforcement ofsharia lawphase one, to be followed by the other
phases," the absolute monarch said in a royal decreeon Wednesday.Plans for the sharia penalties – which
will eventually include flogging, severing of limbs and death by stoning –
triggered condemnation on social media sites in the tiny sultanate earlier this
year...67-year-old Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah – one of the world's wealthiest men
– said in his decree that the move was "a must" under Islam,
dismissing "never-ending theories" that sharia punishments were cruel
in comments clearly aimed at detractors.

Excerpt: A group calling itself "al Qaeda in
Kurdistan" sided with al Qaeda's emir against the Islamic State of Iraq
and the Sham in the ongoing dispute over control of the jihad in Syria. In doing
so, the group also renewed its pledge of "allegiance" to Ayman al
Zawahiri and Mullah Mohammad Omar, the leader of the Afghan Taliban, and said
it would fight the ISIS if needed.